Mother drops baby, toddler from burning apartment window in Lakemba

Megan Levy

A mother trapped in her burning second-storey apartment dropped her newborn baby and toddler from a window down to a passerby when flames tore through the building in Sydney's south-west overnight.

Firefighters arrived at the unit block on Wangee Road in Lakemba on Thursday night to find the 27-year-old woman sitting on the edge of a windowsill, unable to escape the flames that had engulfed her apartment. Just minutes earlier, she had dropped her two-day-old son and her toddler, aged two, down to a rescuer below.

Mother and children escape Lakemba unit fire

Local residents describe an apartment fire which forced a mother of two to drop her children out of a window to a passer-by.

Firefighters used a ladder to rescue the woman who, with her children, escaped serious injury.

Residents from surrounding apartments made numerous calls to triple zero about 9.30pm on Thursday to report that a number of apartments in the three-storey block were on fire, and people were possibly trapped inside.